Longtime vendor says goodbye to SF’s Stow Lake

San Francisco — They were sweeping up the stray kernels of pink popcorn at the Stow Lake Boathouse Monday. Workers cleared out 68 years of unique memorabilia, from the snack bar coffeemaker to the tools that were used to repair the paddleboats.

Let’s just say if you ever had a hankering to buy a slow-gliding (4 mph) and utterly silent electric powerboat, Stow Lake is the place to go. (Price: $500.)

“It is truly the end of an era,” said Jeff Fones, the boathouse manager who has worked there 16 years. “We’ve found stuff from the ’40s and vintage postcards from the ’50s.”

The process of changing the vendor from the McLellan family, which has run the concession for 68 years, to Ortega Family Enterprises had all the elements of a typical San Francisco neighborhood donnybrook – it was contentious, drawn-out and litigious. Legal fees cost the city thousands of dollars.

But in the end the Ortega group, which already runs “sustainable foodservice” in locations like Carlsbad Caverns and Muir Woods, will be taking over as soon as Thursday.

The old guard is packing up this week, but they are not happy about it. A sign sneered at the idea of a “Starbucks style” coffee shop with Wi-Fi, and lots of “energy,” which became a dirty word when someone suggested the sleepy boathouse vibe was energy challenged.

“There’s a lot of passionate folks,” said Fones. “They are very concerned. It’s not just a bunch of kooks.”

Boats are on the water in Plymouth, England, for the America’s Cup buildup with conditions that delighted spectators and scared the bejeebers out of the crews. Sunday’s racing featured three capsizes of the 45-foot catamarans, and although no one was hurt, the idea of pinwheeling through the air, at high speed, definitely got everyone’s attention (check out video at youtube.com/americascup).

And here’s the kicker. The thinking was that these races would be fast, but not so accident-filled because the water was expected to be relatively smooth. Instead, the bay churned up what are being called “San Francisco conditions.”

The 34th America’s Cup will be in San Francisco Bay in 2013 with one tiny change. Instead of the 45-foot boats that have been flipping in Plymouth, the boats here will be nearly twice the size – 72 feet.

Annals of crime. From the Taraval Station and listed under the category “Suspicious Occurrence”: “A man reported that he mistakenly nominated the wrong person as a member of the California Republican Party State Central Committee.” A Republican in San Francisco? Suspicious indeed.